Surviving Hospitals

"...keeping you great" Ten Minutes with the Growth Guy
 
HEADLINES: (Theme: Power of Checklists)

Surviving Intensive Care -- if you or a loved one might EVER end up in an I.C.U. please take five minutes and read this article -- and take it to your local hospital administrator and ask them "are your teams using these simple checklists?" Save a life NOW in your community -- it might be yours. Thanks to our Indian partner, Raghoo Potinii, CEO of Knowledge Capital, for pointing out this article highlighting the importance of top performers using checklists.

Quarterly Infection Rates Reduced to ZERO! -- the biggest risk of going to a hospital is getting an infection, particularly from the lines placed in your body. Disturbed by the thousands of needless deaths, John Hopkins critical-care specialist, Peter Pronovost, put together a simple five step CHECKLIST in 2001 for installing lines in the body. Almost immediately, infection rates plummeted at John Hopkins. However, he couldn't get hospitals interested, primarily because physicians felt they didn't need checklists to do their job (sound familiar?).

Save $175 Million -- Dr. Pronovost finally gets the state of Michigan to try his simple checklists in a handful of the worst hospitals in the country. Results? Notes the article "In December, 2006, the Keystone Initiative published its findings in a landmark article in The New England Journal of Medicine. Within the first three months of the project, the infection rate in Michigan's I.C.U.s decreased by sixty-six percent. The typical I.C.U.—including the ones at Sinai-Grace Hospital—cut its quarterly infection rate to zero. Michigan's infection rates fell so low that its average I.C.U. outperformed ninety percent of I.C.U.s nationwide. In the Keystone Initiative's first eighteen months, the hospitals saved an estimated hundred and seventy-five million dollars in costs and more than fifteen hundred lives. The successes have been sustained for almost four years—all because of a stupid little checklist."

Inspired by the B-17 Bomber -- Boeing almost went bankrupt when one of their top pilots crashed a newly designed bomber right in front of top military brass. Realizing their new generation of aircraft was too complicated for even the best pilots, Boeing created a simple checklist and proceeded to sell over 13,000 planes that flew over 1.8 million miles without a crash!
 
The Best Utilize Checklists -- many of the budget-killing mistakes that risk customer capital can be dramatically reduced or eliminated by putting together simple checklists and getting everyone to follow them. Where could you dramatically reduce mistakes and/or increase quality using a checklist?
 
Rockefeller Habits Checklist -- once/quarter I ask/beg executive teams to review the Rockefeller Habits checklist -- a set of habits that help drive execution and keep your team aligned. Pick two items from the checklist and focus on implementing the specific habits over of the next 90 days. Alan Rudy, CEO of IntoGreat, describes how he uses the checklist in this 1:53 minute video clip off the Rockefeller Habits instructional DVD series.